Until Darwin: Science and the Origins of Race

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Darwin sought to not only produce a new scientific truth, but also to put an end to polygenism, the current scientific discourse on human origins that gave tacit and at times explicit support for slavery: ‘... when the principle of evolution is generally accepted, as it surely will be before long, the dispute between the monogenists and polygenists will die a silent and unobserved death.’ (Charles Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 235)

I admit that at first glance the article seemed rather frivolous but my impression quickly changed as the complexity of its subject matter became clearer. The public reaction to the DW episode reveals contradictions and conflicts with implications for understanding a range of social conflicts, such as wildlife conservation, secular education, protection and/or emancipation of other primates and mammals, the parameters of economic/technological transformation, and how everyday life is set within a landscape littered with the wreckage of past social relations. The simple fact that I originally thought that I would write a short post about this, and now offer this overly long, yet still superficial, post speak either to the depth of the topic, or at the very least to my having over-thought it, but I think it more the former than the latter.

One source of viewer concern and even outrage was the decision to devote the initial episode to the importance of the fossilized remains of Lucy/Dinknesh, and not to the life of a modern African leader. I have only watched excerpts available to viewers in the US. Thus, I will not really be commenting on the content of the series, but on the reaction to it. From all appearances, the series jumps 3.5 million years from Lucy/Dinknesh to the contemporary era. This genealogy, along with the visual representation/reconstruction of Lucy/Dinknesh seems to have prompted much of the negative commentary by viewers, but so did the proposition that Lucy/Dinknesh is either “an” or “the” ancestor – DW is inconsistent when describing her – of modern humans prompted other criticisms. Sheha Ibrahim, writing on the DW Kiswahili page was one of many viewers who were “particularly troubled by the artistic representation of Lucy in the web comic, where she looks more like a monkey than a hominid.” Other commentators on the episode left similar messages (from the DW Kiswahili page https://www.facebook.com/dw.kiswahili/ and translated by Facebook). Despite the inadequacy of the translation, the meaning comes through quite clearly:

Mkenda Paul: The Picture is of a puppet, right on the back picture is a gorilla's face, what it shows is propaganda propaganda that African was once a gorilla, shame on DW.

White people are really despising you. You are not safe, you will answer before God who created us.

Three depictions of Lucy/Dinknesh from DW’s African Roots

These representations of Lucy/Dinknesh were taken from an animation by ComicRepublic, a studio based in Nigeria whose comics explicitly avoid stereotypical characters and depictions, and simplistic notions of culture and diaspora. So there is some irony that their depictions should be the focus of many objections to the episode. It may be nothing more than a case of the best of intentions easily coinciding with unintended consequences and unanticipated interpretations. One can imagine DW’s error as akin to what Trevor Noah recently described (“How Woke Is Too Woke? - Between the Scenes: The Daily Show.” The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Jan 31, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA-sXi8v8Ns ).

ComicRepublic seems to have based its depiction of Lucy/Dinknesh on a reconstruction at the Houston Science Museum, which also appears in a Getty stock photo in roughly the same pose.

A sculptor's rendering of Lucy displayed at the Houston Museum of Natural Science in Texas

The depiction of Lucy/Dinknesh serves as a nice reminder of the fluidity of interpretations and representations, as well as the impossibility of guaranteeing that positive representations will be understood as intended, and not just as easily be understood as profoundly negative (Stuart Hall, Representation and the Media). Produced in Africa, it has the best of intentions in seeking to feature a wide range of historical figures who might otherwise be simply names from the past. However, in the context of a “European” project, even the best of intentions are often problematic. The depictions of Lucy/Dinknesh reveal a complex assemblage of social facts that constantly undermine and yet reproduce each other. If a Nigerian animator decides to make Lucy/Dinknesh’s skin color the same as the contemporary human beside her, was this decision one of pride in the darker skin color, or a matter of acceding to the exceptions of European clients, or was it something else entirely? Was it discussed or naively assumed, and was it a choice based upon any empirical evidence? Perhaps, for sake of argument, the range of skin, eye, and hair color in Lucy/Dinknesh’s contemporaries was broader than we assume, were these questions considered by the animators and producers? It could very well be that they did take such questions into consideration, but their intention does not, again, fix the range of meanings that emerge from our interaction with an object.

Of course, it was in the midst of considering these questions of representation that the Roseanne Barr scandal emerged with it assumptions in full view. There is no need to repeat her posts here as their content is well known and still a topic of discussion. Brent Staples wrote a piece on it just today in the New York Times. One might group it, along with the reaction to Google’s Lucy Doodle https://www.google.com/doodles/41st-anniversary-of-the-discovery-of-lucy and

Some users threatened to boycott Google over the Doodle and the DW series sets comfortably within the same cluster of discourses. “The toxically racist ape characterization has been pushed to the margins of the public square. Nevertheless, a growing body of research shows that it has maintained a pernicious grip on the American imagination. It is especially problematic in the criminal justice system, where subhuman treatment of African-Americans remains strikingly visible” (Brent Staples. “The Racist Trope That Won’t Die.” New York Times. June 17, 2018. https://nyti.ms/2MAanZ1 ). Of course, the most notorious use of the trope was also the most popular, Nott and Gliddon’s illustrations from their Types of Mankind.

But an important difference between the documentaries is that Civilizations begins with something our hands produced, rather than with how our bodies were once shaped:

Simon Schama explores the remote origins of human creativity with the first known marks made some 80,000 years ago in South African caves - marks which were not dictated merely by humanity's physical needs. He marvels at the later cave works - shapes of hands, in red stencils on the walls of caves, and at the paintings of bison and bulls, and Stone Age carvings. (Second Moment of Creation, Civilisations, Series 1 Episode 1 of 9. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05xxsmp )

One can get a bit of background on the Civilizations series by watching this discussion: “In conversation with... Simon Schama, Mary Beard and David Olusoga on BBC Two's Civilisations series” https://youtu.be/258l4h5HbF0 )

Of course the contributors to Civilizations tell anexpansive story all the while still maintaining a certain individual viewpoint. In contrast, while DW’s African Roots is more concerned with “Significant Biographies,” or “influential Africans who left a legacy” as the producers write on the program site:

It seems that the meanings of “influence” and “legacy” are fairly fluid and ambiguous. Accordingly, the historical figures chosen to mark this line of influence range from Lucy/Dinknesh to political leaders of modern nations, liberators of peoples, defenders against colonialism, and legendary heroes. In this and other senses, African Roots stands closer to Kenneth Clark’s original – and European centered – Civilization: A Personal Viewseries (1969) than it does to Schema, Beard, and Olusogu’s Civilizations. However, Clarke’s series hardly ends on a note of the triumph of progress: after reading from Yeats “Things fall apart, the center can not hold,” Clarke concludes with “The trouble is that there is still no center, the moral and intellectual failure of Marxism has left us with no alternative to heroic materialism, and that isn’t enough” https://youtu.be/waoEyjE_dtU?t=46m12sA further tangent that th reader might explore is the genealogical relation implied by the title African Roots as a reference to the Alex Haley book and TV series, making it something of a “Roots for Africans,” but that question we will have to leave aside for now.

Many of the negative responses to the episode emerged from three religious groups – Evangelical Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims. The DW article emphasizes the view that African’s reject evolution because of inadequate education systems and a lack of general knowledge.

Evolution not taught in schools

Pentecostal churches from Kenya to Mozambique openly oppose the evolution theory. In religious schools, evolution is often not taught at all. In state-run schools, it is not always included in the syllabus. In South Africa, for example, the teaching of evolution was only introduced in 2008. The limited amount of resources and training available also means that youngsters often do not get the chance to engage with the subject. During the apartheid era in South Africa, training opportunities for aspiring black teachers were severely restricted in comparison to white teachers. A survey carried out at the time showed that many of the teachers who did receive training did not have sufficient knowledge of the theory of evolution. Other studies have ranked the education systems of other African countries at even lower standards. http://www.dw.com/en/african-roots-tracing-africas-historical-figures/a-42094183

To have more of a context for evaluating such claims, let’s pause to consider some data on the acceptance of evolutionary theory in the United States:

Twenty-two percent seems odd, unless Divinity and profession/business degrees are being included. Otherwise, this number seems extraordinary. If it is accurate, then we may find that Africans and Americans have much in common.

The American public believes scientists are more divided on evolution than they actually are:

When it comes to climate change and evolution, a majority of adults see scientists as generally in agreement that the earth is getting warmer due to human activity (57%) or that humans have evolved over time (66%), though a sizable minority see scientists as divided over each. Perceptions of where the scientific community stands on both climate change and evolution tend to be associated with individual views on the issue. (Cary Funk and Lee Rainie. January 29, 2015. Public and Scientists’ Views on Science and Society. http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2015/01/PI_ScienceandSociety_Report_012915.pdf )

A 2014 Pew Research
Center survey of AAAS members revealed a general consensus among
scientists regarding evolution: 98% of AAAS members held the view
that “Humans and other living things have evolved over time” and
90% affirmed that “Humans and other living things have evolved due
to natural processes such as natural selection.” Only 8% believed
in the guiding hand of “a supreme being” in the process of
evolution (i. e., intelligent design), and only 2 % believe that
“Humans and other living things have existed in their present form
since the beginning of time” (Pew Research Center’s 2014 Survey
of AAAS Members.
http://www.pewinternet.org/files/2016/09/2014-survey-of-AAAS-members-full-survey-questionnaire-and-topline.pdf). It is rather more interesting that the idea of life as fixed in
its forms and variation is held by 2% of the members of the AAAS. It
is a statement about pluralism but also a mark of just how heavy the
nightmares of the past still weigh down upon on us.

There is a certain
irony to the DW article’s emphasis on the failure of the various
educational systems in Africa while avoiding evidence that there
might well be similar flaws in our own understanding of science,
Darwin, the scientific status of evolutionary theory, and the
scientific ideologies of Creationism and Intelligent Design. For
example:

The US has one of the highest levels of public belief in biblical or
other religious accounts of the origins of life on earth among
industrialized countries.

A 2017 Gallup
creationism survey found that 38% of adults in the United States
inclined to the view that "God created humans in their present
form at one time within the last 10,000 years" when asked for
their views on the origin and development of human beings, which was
noted as being at the lowest level in 35 years. 19% believed that
"human beings have developed over millions of years from less
advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process",
despite 49% of respondents indicating they believed in evolution.
Belief in creationism is inversely correlated to education; only 22%
of those with post-graduate degrees believe in strict creationism.[ A
2000 poll for People for the American Way found 70% of the American
public felt that evolution was compatible with a belief in God.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution#United_States

Contrary to
impressions left by some journalistic accounts, a quick search found
very little polling of public opinion in Africa regarding evolution,
and what polling had occurred seemed to be in either South Africa or
the countries North of the Sahara. However, there are some sources
available, though we do so keeping in mind all of the usual caveats
about using public opinion polling to understand sociological
questions.

To get some grasp on
issue of education and the toleration of scientific inquiry, I turned
to the World Values Survey, which has been “conducted in almost 100
countries which contain almost 90 percent of the world’s
population.... including interviews with almost 400,000 respondents”
since 1981 (Inglehart, R., C. Haerpfer, A. Moreno, C. Welzel, K.
Kizilova, J. Diez-Medrano, M. Lagos, P. Norris, E. Ponarin & B.
Puranen et al. (eds.). 2014. “World Values Survey: Round Six -
Country-Pooled Datafile Version”
http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV6.jsp. Madrid: JD
Systems Institute. See also
http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSContents.jsp )

The five WVS questions that seemed
relevant for contextualizing the reaction to African Roots
are:

195. One of the bad effects of science
is that it breaks down people’s ideas of right and wrong.

197. The world is better off, or worse
off, because of science and technology.

All responses were
taken from “Wave 6” of the World Values Survey, 2010-2014.
Totals for each variable are given for comparison, but at the country
level there are significant differences both between African
countries (Algeria, Ghana, Libya, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, South
Africa, Zimbabwe), and between them and the countries outside of
continental Africa (Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, Turkey,
United States). While I will only mention the aggregate totals, it
is worthwhile to spend time looking at the individual country
responses, so I have included screen-shots of the search results.

Those in continental
Africa are much more likely to believe in a Divinity, as opposed to
those in our non-African sample, though at 87.7%, Americans are
closer to Africans than to other non-African countries.

V148. Believe in God. “Do you believe in God?”

Yes

No

Non-continental Africa Average

65.90%

25.20%

Continental Africa Average

98.60%

0.90%

In general, the two
groups also differ in the degree to which they believe that deference
should be given to religious teachings when they conflict with
scientific knowledge. It is here that we find a more obvious
divergence of opinion:

However, in
responses to the other questions, Africans and non-Africans are not
so different in their views of the role of science in everyday life
and of the contribution of science and technology to a notion of
social progress. While Africans may believe more strongly in the
supremacy of religion over science, they generally do not agree that
we depend too much on science for our well being:

V194. “We depend too much on science and not enough on
faith.”

Completely

Agree

Completely
Disagree

Non-continental Africa Average

10.20%

14.80%

Continental Africa Average

9.30%

11.80%

Africans were
slightly more likely to believe that science undermines social norms
and morality, but relatively few endorse the view that science
promotes any “breakdown” of morality, values, or the social
order.

V195. “One of the bad effects of science is that it breaks
down people’s ideas of right and wrong.”

Completely Agree

Completely Disagree

Non-continental Africa Average

9.20%

12.10%

Continental Africa Average

11.30%

7.70%

And when it comes to
a broad question regarding the general benefits of science and
technology, Africans are more conscious of the the positive aspects
of scientific research and technological innovation.

V197. “All things considered, would you say that the world
is better off, or worse off, because of science and technology?”

A lot better off.

A lot worse off.

Non-continental Africa Average

17.70%

4.20%

Continental Africa Average

22.60%

4.00%

So it seems that the
relation of religious belief to the acceptance of scientific
knowledge can not be measured solely on the basis of the acceptance
of the theory of evolution, for the rejection of evolution on
religious grounds does not necessarily translate into a rejection of
science in general. We already know this from the fact that many
great naturalists opposed any notion of evolution, e.g., Georges
Cuvier, Louis Agassiz, Samuel G. Morton, immediately come to mind.
And even self-avowed Darwinists have propagated metaphysical concepts
such as germ-plasm, genius, and selfish genes; A. R. Wallace’s
acceptance of an ideological constellation of evolution, socialism,
supremacy, and spiritualism is another instance worth considering
(See, for example, Wallace, A. R. 1864. Discussion [on the
extinction of races]. Journal of the Anthropological Society of
London 2: cx-cxi.
http://wallace-online.org/converted/pdf/1864_Bendyshe_S087.pdf ).

If it is true that
the public is deeply skeptical of evolutionary theory, then it is
important to note that the DW article itself manifests an uncertain
level of discomfort with “the theory of evolution” – which it
never defines and leaves it to the reader to assume that we are
thinking about the same thing and in the same way. This discomfort
can be found in the two different descriptions of the significance of
Lucy/Dinknesh’s fossilized remains.

In the opening three
paragraphs of the DW article, Lucy/Dinknesh is described in two ways:

“Lucy is
approximately 3.2 million years old and has been identified by
researchers as one of the earliest ancestors of modern-day humans,
lending weight to the theory of evolution….

Lucy is regarded as the ancestor of
all human beingsand Africa among researchers today
undoubtedly as the cradle of humankind.” (Emphasis added)

As the “earliest
ancestor” she gives support to the theory of evolution, and as the
Eve-like ancestor of all human beings” she establishes the
importance of Africa as the “cradle of humankind,” with all it
meanings, including reproduction, direction, development, perhaps
even design and teleology. These ambiguities around Lucy/Dinknesh’s
significance flow directly from tendencies that challenge the primacy
of scientific reason and the legitimacy of the theory of evolution.
It asks the question: can science be distinguished from its social
context and likewise is scientific theory a matter of cultural
appropriateness? There are three interrelated themes recognizable in
the criticisms of evolution in the DW article:

First:
criticisms of evolution because it was part of the
scientific-technical knowledge of domination, the colonial/imperial
enterprise, and slavery;

Second:
evolution is presented as a scientific theory that promoted and still
promotes colonial ideologies, allowing forms of colonial domination
to survive in the reproduction of everyday life;

Third: as the
foundation of a quasi-theological Hegelian concept that is at the
core of the vulgar concept of progress that justified
colonialism/imperialism.

Because science is
essential to society, science and scientists can and should be
critiqued, but not all critiques are equal: a religious opposition to
the theory of evolution is not the same as a critique of various
scientific ideologies that have claimed to be derived from Darwin’s
work.

In considering these
criticisms, we should pause to note that in Darwin’s era, evolution
often denoted a determined progression of necessary stages of
development that generally, though not always, moves from simplicity
to greater complexity in a steady unfolding of fixed and unvarying
species over the history of Nature. In contrast to this religiously
imbued understanding, Darwin’s work transformed evolution into a
scientific means for making sense of variation in light of natural
selection, the interrelation of species in the struggle for life, and
the genealogical connection of all life over time. In other words,
the Origin of Species is written as an answer to the “Species
Question”: as a scientific, secular, foundation for abolitionism;
as an argument for the genealogical and ecological study of Life in
which chance plays a crucial role. Nature is not fixed, nor are
species and, by implication, nor are the “races” of humans.
Darwin famously did not mention evolution until the last word of the
Origin, specifically because he wanted to avoid confusing it
with meanings meanings of the term “evolution.”

While it is
certainly apparent that both scientific inquiry and theological
exegesis demand equal amounts of intellectual rigor, what separates
evolutionary theory from religious scholarship is that Darwin’s
view of Nature rests on evidence of change over time, variation, and
chance. Diametrically opposed to this is the assumption of fixity
inherent in religious notions of a divinely created and determined
nature.

A 2005 Pew
Research Center poll found that 70% of evangelical Christians
believed that living organisms have not changed since their creation,
but only 31% of Catholics and 32% of mainline Protestants shared this
opinion. A 2005 Harris Poll estimated that 63% of liberals and 37% of
conservatives agreed that humans and other primates have a common
ancestry.

The acceptance of
these religious doctrines as “African” without any mention of
their own relation to past structures of domination and ideology
suggests that colonial discipline is so burned-in as to now seem
natural, as though Christianity is somehow specifically African; as
though there is an African Christianity and an African Islam, as
opposed to Middle Eastern Christianity or Islam, or to North American
versions (so much for the notion of “catholicism”), the
variations multiply with the proliferation of geographical
designations and claims for geographical/national/racial
recognition….. or even worse, that the missionaries were part of
the civilizing process, but also spiritual saviors from its effects.
The major religions all spread through war, conquest, and disease as
much as by peace and some ethics of care.

But beyond the
religious dimension, [Tayob] can identify another reason why many
Africans reject the theory of evolution: “Many people feel that
these theories do not belong to them, that they came from outside of
Africa, and so they cannot participate in their development....”

Why does this
criticism apply to evolutionary theory but not to religion? Unless
we are willing to expand the geographical meaning of Africa by making
at least the present Middle East a part of Africa, it is difficult to
argue that there is anything particularly African about their
origins. Any such idea would no doubt upset those like, for example,
the Israeli authorities in Palestine who have been determined to
expel Africans from “the Middle East’s only democracy” (“Empire Files: How Black Lives Don’t Matter in Israel”
and see also “What is Cultural Studies?” ). Like other geographical constructs, Africa organizes and
homogenizes differences.

Clive Finlayson, for
one, has considered the meaning of this geographical concept in
organizing the interpretation of research into primate origins. He
writes in his The Humans Who Went Extinct; Why Neanderthals Died
Out and We Survived (2009) of “the strict political division of
continents, a distinction that has never existed other than in our
minds, complicating our understanding of how early primates and apes
got to where they did. The same simplistic distinction has been
widely applied in the human origins debate. I think that this way of
carving up the Afro-Eurasian land mass has held back progress in our
understanding of what really happened, and how it happened”
(2009:45). To quote him at length from an earlier portion of the
book:

Orang-utans, gibbons, chimpanzees, gorillas, and humans are the lone
survivors of the mid-Miocene ape apogee, around 16 million years ago,
when apes of many different shapes and sizes lived from the Iberian
peninsula to China and from Kenya south to Namibia. This was a vast
region of tropical and subtropical woodlands, difficult for us to
imagine today, and the apes spread out right across it. In some
cases, they went from Europe into Africa and in others in the
opposite direction. The distinction only has meaning when we apply
current political boundaries. Only the occasional sea level rises
that separated Africa from Eurasia temporarily restricted movement
and the apes of the day exploited the opportunities that came and
went like the ebb and flow of the tide.... The debate on the
relationship between African and Eurasian apes in the Miocene
resembles others that we will meet later in this book when looking at
their human descendants. Much of the confusion stems from the
artificial division of Africa and Eurasia. If instead we consider
the Afro-Eurasian land mass as a single environment the the entire
perspective changes and we get a much clearer picture, The canvas is
made up of vegetation belts and sea barriers and the artist is
climate. In the case the actors are the apes.... The story unfolds
in the theater that is our planet. It is a theater with several
interconnecting stages. The doors between some of the stages are
sometimes closed, preventing actors moving between them; some stages
are further away from the rest and are harder to reach while some
have doors closed for longer than others. At first the acts are
restricted to parts of Africa and Eurasia but eventually Australia
and then the Americas are brought into the play. The scenes and
stage sets change with each act and on each stage. The stage manager
is climate, constantly changing and rearranging the scenes.... Chance
is everywhere in our story and it has affected it in subtle, as well
as dramatic, ways (2009:13).

Now,
of course, Finlayson does veer uncomfortably close to the
environmental determinism of early 20th century
geographers, but he is too much of a Darwinian to be lured into crude
determinism: “The key point of my argument is the one that makes,
for me, our story such a beautiful one. It is the role of chance.
It is how unexpected events and situations altered the course of the
story in unpredictable and unforeseen ways” (2009:13). Epicurus
and Lucretius’ emphasis on chance as an essential aspect of nature
haunts these lines. Against this world of chance, one hears
expressions of fixity and design in the voices objecting to the
representations of Lucy/Dinknesh and to the descriptions of her place
in relation to humans in Africa today.

Is it useless to
point out that if evolution is a threat because it originates
elsewhere, then what are we to say of the religions of slavers,
colonial bureaucrats, functionaries, and tyrants have become
“indigenous” to Africa and, presumably, Africans?

In any event, unless
we expand our geographical concept of “Africa,” we have no choice
but to conclude that the forms of Christianity and Islam described in
the DW article are themselves the most prominent ruins and residues
of the same colonial disciplines that were essential to the
reproduction of imperial authority. As historian and documentary
maker Michael Wood once remarked, “Throughout history, the priest
and the executioner have walked hand in hand.” It is arguable that
despite its origins the theory of evolution has resulted in an
understanding of ecological processes make it possible for us to
consider preserving landscapes, species, and human societies that a
regime of colonialist and post-colonial dogmas would have erased long
ago.

Without a doubt
imperialism reserved a fundamental role for the sciences of life in
the reproduction of power and the domination of nature. The theory
itself was “created” during the imperial/colonial/scientific
expedition by the HMS Beagle and by A. R. Wallace during his travels
in the Amazon and the Pacific The HMS Beagle was
at once a ship of peaceful scientific exploration and
surveying, but one which also carried 10 cannons, with the two
heaviest personally provided by Captain Fitz-Roy, who wanted more
firepower than the Admiralty had requisitioned for the voyage. It
also carried the Fuegians who Fitz-Roy had kidnapped and brought to
Britain in order to educate and reintroduce to their villages as
agents of civilization. They would serve as exemplars of the
benefits of colonialism and slavery. This experiment was a failure
for all concerned, but especially those who he abducted. Here is how
Fitz-Roy described the motivations and goals of the expedition:

The best charts of
the South American coasts, which had been made by Spain, or by
Portugal, were very inadequate to the wants of a rapidly growing
intercourse when France and England undertook to explore and survey
those shores for the benefit of the world…. In the autumn the
Beagle was again prepared for a surveying voyage. Every care and
assistance was given in her equipment. She wanted nothing that her
size would allow to be taken on board. At the end of that year (1831)
she sailed from Plymouth. One particular object being the measurement
of meridian distances, by a large number of chronometers, the Beagle
was ordered to make her voyages by the shortest steps, touching land
frequently, for the purpose of obtaining observations and
ascertaining the rates of the chronometers. Until the vessel arrived
in the River Plata, her chief occupations were, measuring meridian
distances, and slightly adding to our knowledge of the Abrolhos
shoals, on the coast of Brazil....

While the officers
of the Beagle were employed in their usual duties afloat, Mr. Charles
Darwin, a zealous volunteer, examined the shores. He will make known
the results of his five years' voluntary seclusion and disinterested
exertions in the cause of science. Geology has been his principal
pursuit....

Fitz-Roy pointedly does not mention the Feuagians in his description
of them:

The wretched natives of Southern and Western Tierra del Fuego are low
in stature, ill-looking, and ill-proportioned. (I speak of them
generally in their savage state.)

Their colour is darker than that of cooper; it is like old mahogany,
or rusty iron. The trunk of their body is large in proportion to
their cramped and rather crooked limbs. Rough, coarse, and extremely
dirty black hair, half hides, yet heightens, a villainous expression
of ugly features.

Sometimes these outcasts wear a piece of seal, otter, or guanaco skin
upon their backs; and perhaps the skin of a penguin, or some such
covering, is used in front; but often nothing is worn except a scrap
of hide, which is tied to their waist. Even this is only for a pocket
in which they may carry pebbles for their slings.

Passing so much time in low wigwams, or cramped in small canoes,
injures their limbs and movements. In height they vary from four feet
ten to five feet six inches; yet the size of their bodies equals that
of our largest men. Of course they look clumsy and ill-proportioned.
Women usually wear more covering, perhaps a whole skin of a seal. The
women comb their hair with the jaw of a porpoise. Both sexes oil
themselves, or rub their bodies with grease. They paint, or rather
daub their faces and bodies with red, white, or black.

Perhaps Freycinet, and those with him, saw some of these people
painted black, as Bory St. Vincent quotes their authority for the
natives of Tierra del Fuego being black, like the natives of Van
Diemen's Land.—See article "Homme" in the Dictionnaire
Classique.

As a Fuegian is seldom out sight of his canoe, or a wigwam, a slight
idea of those, his only constructions, should be given.

The canoe is made of several large pieces of sewed together. Its
shape is nearly that which would be taken by the strong bark of tree
(twelve to twenty feet in length, and eighteen inches, or two feet in
diameter), separated from the solid wood in one piece, joined at the
ends, but kept open by sticks in the middle. It is ballasted by clay,
and always carries a small fire.

There are two kinds of wigwams: one is made with a number of small
straight trees, whose upper ends are united, while the lower form a
circle; and another which is formed by branches stuck in the ground,
bent together at the top, and slightly covered by skins, bark, grass,
or leafy twigs. A small entrance is left open: smoke goes out as
easily as rain enters.

Western Patagonia is like the worst part of Tierra del Fuego. It is
the upper part of a great range of mountains, whose bases are
immersed in the ocean. The mountain-tops from multitudes of islands,
barren to seaward, but impenetrably wooded towards the main-land; and
always drenched with the waters of incessant rain, never dried up by
evaporation. Every foot of earth, every tree, and shrub, on those
island, is always thoroughly wet. Of course the country is
uninhabitable, except by savages. [page] 317-8.

The
familiar convergence of power, scientific inquiry, domination,
disease, technological innovation, and exploration that mark
Enlightenment can be found in the first few sentences of Darwin’s
own Researches:

AFTER having been twice driven back by heavy south-western gales, Her
Majesty's ship Beagle, a ten-gun brig, under the command of Captain
Fitz Roy, R.N., sailed from Devonport on the 27th of December, 1831.
The object of the expedition was to complete the survey of Patagonia
and Tierra del Fuego, commenced under Captain King in 1826 to 1830—to
survey the shores of Chile, Peru, and of some islands in the
Pacific—and to carry a chain of chronometrical measurements round
the World. On the 6th of January we reached Teneriffe, but were
prevented landing, by fears of our bringing the cholera: the next
morning we saw the sun rise behind the rugged outline of the Grand
Canary island, and suddenly illumine the Peak of Teneriffe, whilst
the lower parts were veiled in fleecy clouds. This was the first of
many delightful days never to be forgotten. On the 16th of January,
1832, we anchored at Porto Praya, in St. Jago, the chief island of
the Cape de Verd archipelago. (Charles Darwin. 1845. Journal of
Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries
Visited during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Round the World. London:
Murray. 2d ed.

In
contrast to Fitz-Roy, Darwin mentions the Fueagians and his
observations of them along with the results of Fitz-Roy’s colonial
experiment take up the entirety of Chapter 10 of the Researches or
Voyage of the Beagle. (Charles Darwin. 1845. Journal of researches
into the natural history and geology of the countries visited during
the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle round the world. London: Murray. 2d ed.)

For his part,
Wallace seems grateful for the pacifying effect of traders spreading
Christianity and Islam, making exotic locales safe for
collectors/travelers like himself. He was mildly dismayed that these
leading edges of civilization had not yet made as many inroads into
New Guinea as he had been led to believe before his arrival. Still,
he manages to establish his own version of Conrad's “Outpost of Progress” in one of the few places where it was “safe to
reside among them”

Having been for three months the sole European inhabitant of the vast
island of New Guinea, I trust a few notes of my visit may prove
interesting, in the absence of much definite information as to that
remote and imperfectly known country. Even at Macassar, Amboyna, and
Ternate, whence a considerable trade is carried on with the
north-western coasts and adjacent islands, I could learn nothing,
except about one or two spots which had been visited by my
informants; and even as regards them, the points on which I was most
interested had seldom been inquired into. I was led to believe there
were several places where the natives had been sufficiently in
communication with Mahommedan and European traders to render it safe
to reside among them. I have now ascertained, however, that there is
on the main land only one such place, viz., Dorey; where more than
thirty years ago the inhabitants were found by Lesson and Duperrey to
be quiet and inoffensive. According to the best information I have
been able to obtain, there are at the present time absolutely no
other inhabitants than the native Papuans over the whole of this
great island. Not a single Malay, or Bugis, or Ceramese settlement
exists, though several are scattered over the outlying islands; the
principal being at Salwatty, a large island, forming the apparent
north-west extremity of New Guinea, from which it is separated by a
very narrow strait. The statement often found on maps that New Guinea
is ‛inhabited by Papuans and Malays,’ is therefore incorrect....

At the village of Dorey I built a rough jungle-house, in which I
resided for three months, occupying myself (in the intervals of fever) with exploring the
natural history of the surrounding district.

Unlike the wealthy
Darwin, Wallace’s roots were in the working class and he was a
working Naturalist who supported himself and finance his travels
through his writing and collecting specimen for collectors, museums,
and wealthy amateurs with the cheerful dispassion of any collector of
human crania.

Having spent nine months in a district where the Mias is most
abundant, and having devoted much time and attention to the subject,
I wish to give some account of my observations and collections, and
particularly to record their bearing on the question of how many
species are yet known from Borneo.

I have altogether examined the bodies of seventeen freshly killed
Orangs, all but one shot by myself. Of eleven of these I have preserved the skins, either in spirits or dried. Of seven I
have perfect skeletons, and of the remainder the skulls; and of all,
the sex, colour and other external peculiarities were accurately
noted at the time, as well as all the principal dimensions. I have
besides two other skeletons and two skulls, the sex and external
characters of which are determined on the authority of Europeans or
natives who saw them when freshly killed. Of this extensive series
sixteen are fully adult, and their skulls are therefore strictly
comparable with each other, nine of them being males and seven
females. They were moreover all obtained in a very limited tract of
country watered by the same small river and of very uniform physical
features. We may therefore assume, unless the contrary can be
supported by the very strongest evidence, that the male and female
specimens are sexes of the same species, whether they be one or more.

The Preface of
Wallace’s Malay Archipelago describes
in more detail the motivations and results of his expeditions:

MY readers will naturally ask why I have delayed writing this book
for six years after my return; and I feel bound to give them full
satisfaction on this point.

When I reached England in the spring of 1862, I found myself
surrounded by a room full of packing-cases, containing the
collections that I had from time to time sent home for my private
use. These comprised nearly three thousand bird-skins, of about a
thousand species; and at least twenty thousand beetles and
butterflies, of about seven thousand species; besides some quadrupeds
and land-shells. A large proportion of these I had not seen for
years; and in my then weak state of health, the unpacking, sorting,
and arranging of such a mass of specimens occupied a long time....

My journeys to the various islands were regulated by the seasons and
the means of conveyance. I visited some islands two or three times at
distant intervals, and in some cases had to make the same voyage four
times over....

As the main object of all my journeys was to obtain specimens of
natural history, both for my private collection and to supply
duplicates to museums and amateurs, I will give a general statement
of the number of specimens I collected, and which reached home in
good condition. I must premise that I generally employed one or two,
and sometimes three Malay servants to assist me; and for nearly half
the time had the services of an English lad, Charles Allen. I was
just eight years away from England, but as I travelled about fourteen
thousand miles within the Archipelago, and made sixty or seventy
separate journeys, each involving some preparation and loss of time,
I do not think that more than six years were really occupied in
collecting.

I find that my Eastern collections amounted to:

310 specimens of Mammalia.

100 — Reptiles.

8,050 — Birds.

7,500 — Shells.

13,100 — Lepidoptera.

83,200 — Coleoptera.

13,400 — other Insects.

125,660 specimens of natural history.

Wallace, A. R. 1869. The Malay Archipelago: The land of the
orang-utan, and the bird of paradise. A narrative of travel, with
studies of man and nature. London: Macmillan and Co. Volume 1.

Wallace was able to
make his observations and support himself precisely because of a
global trade in ‘exotic” animals and plants existed to supply the
European market with specimen for Natural History collections. It
is certainly true that Darwin’s opportunity to develop his view of
Life came as a result of the the British Admiralty’s desire for
knowledge of the Earth and a description of the globe. Moreover,
Darwin’s participation in A Manual of Scientific Enquiry
says as much about his relationship to imperial power as his earlier
five year voyage on the HMS Beagle.

Although a number of natural historians had prepared concise
instructional booklets for their collectors before 1849, A Manual of
Scientific Enquiry marked a unification of science in the service of
the British Empire. Eschewing disciplinary specialization, the Royal
Navy expected their men to collect anything that might further
imperial and scientific expansion. Coral, plants, tidal recordings,
meteorological data, “medical statistics,” and even ethnological
observations would all make imperial holdings legible and their
contents—human or not—more easily fixable into modalities of
scientific order centered in growing public museums, gardens, zoos,
and libraries. Bringing together the writing of men like William
Whewell (1794–1866), Charles Darwin (1809–1882), and Richard Owen
(1804–1892) and edited by the polymath John Herschel (1792–1871),
the instructional book spelled out the objects deemed important to
the advancement of imperial science.

(Elaine Ayers. 2018 ‘A Few Plain Instructions for Collecting’:
Nineteenth-Century Botanical Collection Manuals in the Service of
Empire. May 26, 2018.

But evolutionary
concepts do not owe their existence to Darwin. He was one of a long
line of materialists, as was his contemporary, Karl Marx. For
example, materialist notions of evolutionary change were described by
the Roman Epicurean poet Lucretius in Book V of his Rerum natura,
long before the era of modern
imperialism.

Moreover,
one should not forget those whose works offered a deeply radical
understanding of Darwin, such as Peter Kropotkin, e. g., Mutual
Aid: A Factor of Evolution:

Consequently I thought that a book, written on Mutual Aid as a Law of
Nature and a factor of evolution, might fill an important gap. When
Huxley issued, in 1888, his ‛Struggle-for-life’ manifesto (Struggle for Existence and its Bearing upon Man),
which to my appreciation was a very incorrect representation of the
facts of Nature, as one sees them in the bush and in the forest, I
communicated with the editor of the Nineteenth Century, asking him
whether he would give the hospitality of his review to an elaborate
reply to the views of one of the most prominent Darwinists; and Mr.
James Knowles received the proposal with fullest sympathy. I also spoke
of it to W. Bates. ‛Yes, certainly; that is true Darwinism,’ was his
reply. ‛It is horrible what 'they' have made of Darwin. Write these
articles, and when they are printed, I will write to you a letter which
you may publish.’ Unfortunately, it took me nearly seven years to write
these articles, and when the last was published, Bates was no longer
living. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/kropotkin-peter/1902/mutual-aid/index.htm

And the geographer Elisee Reclus:

During the Siege of Paris (1870–1871) Reclus served in the National
Guard. During this period he published articles in support of the
Paris Commune. He was arrested on 5th April, 1871. Found guilty of
offences against the government, in November he was sentenced to be
deported to New Caledonia for life. After international pressure,
from scientists such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace,
this was changed in January 1872 to perpetual banishment from France.

and
in critical works like Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents
and Max Horkheimer’s essay “The Revolt of Nature.” Moreover,
Alfred Russell Wallace’s embrace of socialism is often ignored or
treated with a wink and a nod.

More
famously and
importantly in the history of science,
anti-evolutionary naturalists such as Georges Cuvier greatly profited from
the expansion of French imperial power. In Cuvier’s case,
dispatching his students and surrogates to join Napoleon’s invasion
of Egypt and later putting
the seized relics
and specimen to use in defending biblical
authority, the fixity of species, the superiority of Europeans, and
his theory of catastrophism. It was Cuvier, and not Darwin, who
dissected Saartjie Baartman and used the
authority granted by his pioneering
insights into comparative anatomy – and
by the State – to declared
her more gorilla than human. And it was Darwin’s polygenist
opponents who dissected the first gorilla brought to the United
States and declared its’ appearance to be more Negroid than
European (Savage, Thomas S. 1847. “Notice of the External
Characteristics and Habits of Troglodytes Gorilla, A New Species of
Orang from the Gaboon River (Osteology of the Same by Jeffries
Wyman).” Boston Journal of Natural History,
5:417–442.) Of course, this has been covered in
my Until Darwin and
the genealogy of evolutionary theory with its many
permutations is not the point
of the DW article, nor is there much interest in situating Darwinism
within its social context – and
so dubious
associationsand
the prejudices of the present era are
left unexamined.

Another
theme that runs through the DW article, is the need
forsome
sort of reconciliation of evolutionary theory and religious
faith. The reconciliation is variously presented as:

1] Within the
thinking of the believer (non-believers are noticeably absent from
this discussion):

“Stenger told DW. ‛The teacher said to me: As a scientist, I know
this cannot be true. How can I bring science and religion together?’”

2] Between two
fundamentally different modes of producing knowledge and technologies
of authority:

….But how can
creation and evolution be reconciled in Islam?.... Abdulkader Tayob,
a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Cape Town, has
also thought a lot about how faith and evolution can be reconciled.
“The belief of many Muslims, like many Jews and Christians, is that
God created everything out of an absolute will and that man is, so to
speak, the pinnacle of creation,” he told DW....” “Many people
believe that this idea is compromised by evolutionary theory.”

3] Or so that each
of us is altered in order allow each to recognize the other:

Individual Islamic scholars have already commented on these issues,
but a genuine debate on ways to unite faith and evolution does not
yet exist in the Islamic world, says Tayob. “What the story of creation means to tell us is that God is at the
beginning of creation,” says Stenger. “Science is able to tell us
this in more detail, which is why the theory of evolution is very
important.....”

In all three
instances, there is a certain faith in the eventual suspension of
historical and ideological antagonisms. At no point is there any
suggestion that science and religion might be asking different
questions in the pursuit of different goals. At the same time, what
united the three notions of reconciliation is the implicit demand
that science be put to work proving the existence of divinity/design.
This was, of course, the very basis of the relation of Theology,
Natural History and Natural Philosophy: the systems of knowledge in
the colonial/imperial era before Darwin. Religion retains a coercive
force in the form of desire and settled meanings. Systems of
knowledge can not be entirely erased. Indeed, a recent survey of
Scientists in eight countries and regions indicates that the
perception of hostility between scientists and religious believers is
overstated.

....it is
important to acknowledge that at the individual level and from the
perspective of scientists’ themselves, science does not appear to
have a secularizing effect on scientists…. In the US, for example,
where 67 percent of the general population compared to 30 percent of
scientists identify as religious, only one-third of scientists view
the science-religion relationship as one of conflict.

The question of a
reconciliation should include the acknowledgment that for many
scientists themselves, there is not real conflict. This is a
different light with which to illuminate science in the context of it
social relations.

So there is no
conclusion to this summary of some critical observations. The
questions raised by DW, its viewers/commentators, and in this blog
are not closed off, nor are the possible interpretations of the
conflicting ideologies that emerge from the DW series and article.
Perhaps evolutionary theory can not be reconciled with religion. We
do see that attitudes about religion and science in general – and
evolutionary theory in particular – vary greatly. Such extensive
variation would no doubt have made Darwin smile. The existence of a
wide range of attitudes is as true for Africa as it is for the
non-African countries that were surveyed: and some African countries
have more in common with the United States than with each other. In
fact, the dispute over Lucy/Dinknesh highlights the problems that
arise when we use these geographical notions to describe and
categorize either human origins or modern politics.

The utopian
reconciliation of evolution with the doctrines of Christianity and
Islam would be the reconciliation of ideologies with genealogies that
intersect during the period of colonialism. To the degree that this
might be correct, then shouldn’t we ask if such a reconciliation is
at all desirable? One wonders how any such reconciliation would
advance emancipation from colonialism, or free scientific inquiry
from the demands of faith, or promote a general freedom from the
confines of dogma.

In the end, the
question is not whether Lucy/Dinknesh is human, nor is it a matter of
simply measuring the degree to which she can be classified as
“African” and what is excluded from this category. Darwin long
ago argued that there is no one moment when one can make the division
between consciousness and non-consciousness in living organisms:

It has, I think, now been shewn that man and the higher animals,
especially the Primates, have some few instincts in common. All have
the same senses, intuitions, and sensations,—similar passions,
affections, and emotions, even the more complex ones, such as
jealousy, suspicion, emulation, gratitude, and magnanimity; they
practise deceit and are revengeful; they are sometimes susceptible to
ridicule, and even have a sense of humour; they feel wonder and
curiosity; they possess the same faculties of imitation, attention,
deliberation, choice, memory, imagination, the association of ideas,
and reason, though in very different degrees....

There is no moment
when you can say that this is a human and that ancestor is not.
Differences are evident, but only become clear by looking back over
the long archaeological, linguistic, and genetic past that resulted in
the humans that we are, varied and yet deeply the same. To the
degree that we accept Lucy/Dinknesh as one of our ancestors, we also
tacitly acknowledge that she processed some degree of
sentience/consciousness and thus we would have to admit that there is
some similarity between us, but is this the only consideration
animating the discussion? Is there another that follows from it that
makes us even more uncomfortable than the premise that humans have
changed over time? This new question arises now: why don’t we
extend the same considerations, and legal rights, to primates,
mammals, and other animals? We are manifestly nothing special except
in terms of the ecological harm we cause, and ironically we do so
knowing that we will suffer by our own hand the same end as any of
the other species that we continue to drive from the face of the
Earth. From the perspective of an Ape, humans no doubt appear
arbitrary and savage – an altogether intelligent assessment.

Darwin did not forget the
Fuegians, and they appear at the end of the Descent of Man where
he addresses the feelings of those who might be offended by the idea
that we have descended from a common ancestor:

The main conclusion
arrived at in this work, namely that man is descended from some
lowly-organised form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful
to many persons. But there can hardly be a doubt that we are
descended from barbarians. The astonishment which I felt on first
seeing a party of Fuegians on a wild and broken shore will never be
forgotten by me, for the reflection at once rushed into my mind—such
were our ancestors. These men were absolutely naked and bedaubed with
paint, their long hair was tangled, their mouths frothed with
excitement, and their expression was wild, startled, and distrustful.
They possessed hardly any arts, and like wild animals lived on what
they could catch; they had no government, and were merciless to every
one not of their own small tribe. He who has seen a savage in his
native land will not feel much shame, if forced to acknowledge that
the blood of some more humble creature flows in his veins. For my own
part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who
braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or
from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried
away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs—as
from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody
sacrifices, practises infanticide without remorse, treats his wives
like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest
superstitions.

Man may be excused
for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own
exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of
his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed
there, may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant
future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with
the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. I have given
the evidence to the best of my ability; and we must acknowledge, as
it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy
which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not
only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his
god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and
constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—Man
still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly
origin.